About Me

Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

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Saturday, December 31, 2016

ABC 20-20 Friday night covered the mother-daughter relationship between Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher, as with this link.

Carrie Fisher had a cardiac arrest on a flight to Los Angeles from London, 15 minutes before landing. Nearby passengers tried to do CPR, which presumably flight attendants know how to do. It’s a good point to wonder, how many of us are prepared to do this if called upon suddenly.

Reynolds went into a fatal stroke the day after her daughter’s death. Stress hormones in her cardiovascular system from grief probably caused the stroke.

I probably saw “Singin’ in the Rain” as a child, but I actually remember “The Tender Trap” (with its now outmoded idea of heterosexual romance and of women) and particularly “Susan Slept Here”.

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

The film tracks many migrants from Syria, other areas of Africa, through Greece or Italy (after crossing the Mediterranean in rafts), into France, the UK, Germany, Sweden, and Finland.

The film often shows maps of Europe with moving dots showing the diaspora.

The film focuses on a few characters, like Hassan (Syria) and Saddiq (Afghaninstan).

One of the most harrowing journeys is from Gambia across Niger and then across the Sahara desert.
Many migrants wind up at a camp in Calais (“the Jungle”), from which they try to escape to the UL through the Chunnel with fake papers.

Sunday, December 18, 2016

CBS “48 Hours” aired “The Fight for Melissa” Saturday night (Dec. 17), the narrative of former Illinois day care worker Melissa Calusinsku, serving 31 years in prison for the supposed murder of a child in her care with a skull fracture. CBS has the main story link here with a lot of detail.

The narrative is complicated by an apparently coerced confession, and the evidence of a supposed skull fracture. But the defense had maintained that the boy already had an earlier injury.

She confessed six hours into the confession, after 79 denials.

There seems to be a real vulnerability for day care or other caregiver workers, often at the bottom of the economic scale.

Here’s a linkwhere documentary filmmaker Andrew Jenks (“Unlocking the Truth” on MTV) explains how our legal system is broken. Prosecutors are under enormous political pressure, to say the least.

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Tonight, CNN aired a one hour special, “The Murder of JonBenet”. Here is a CNN list of “fast facts” on the case. The documentary occurs 20 years after the original kidnapping and murder.

The show summarized what is available in much more detail on Wikipedia here. The kidnapping was unusual in the delay until the ransom note, the amount asked, and then the discovery of the body the day after Christmas, 1996, in the Boulder CO home. CNN covers the period when family members were considered suspects.

Wikipedia discusses the large amount of defamation litigation surrounding case, especially from the family. In one case, a web surfer was sued merely for two comments in a discussion forum by another person whom he apparently implicated. (Section 230 would protect the forum site itself, but there are concerns that under Trump this could get undone.)

Sunday, December 11, 2016

Jeison Aristizabal from Colombia won the vote as the “CNN
Hero of 2016” at the broadcast from the Museum of Natural History in New York
City tonight, as hosted by Anderson Cooper.

Jeison’s link is here. He oversaw a service for youth living with disabilities.

There were ten candidates.

I thought he story of Jordanian refugee (and Muslim) Luma
Mufleh who, in Clarktson, GA (suburb of Atlanta) forming “Fugee Family” which
includes a school, for one of the largest concentrations of refugees (outside
of Michigan) in the U.S. , link here.

Other interesting heroes include Georgie Smith, who helps
foster kids emerging into young adulthood, and semi-pro bicycle racer Craig
Dodson, who works with low-income kids in Richmond getting them into cycling.

The victim, UNC Charlotte student Irina Yarmolenko, was founded in a crashed car with a noose in the Catawba river in NC in August, 2008.

Carver had been nearby that day and would eventually be coerced by police. DNA was found around the car (but not on the ligatures). The 20-20 broadcast develops the idea that the DNA could have come from cross-contamination by law enforcement. This sort of thing has happened before, as in another case in California.

At the trial, the Defense didn’t call witnesses, believing that the prosecutor had not presented convincing evidence. Yet the jury convicted very quickly.

Another prison inmate wrote a fake confession for the crime, seeking publicity.

This case sounds like a good one for Andrew Jenks and his "Unlocking the Truth" series on MTV.

Wednesday, December 07, 2016

Early in the documentary Zakaria shows the GOP meeting, almost on inauguration day 2009, to plot Obama's undoing by obstuctionism in Congress. The bailout passed merely along party lines, even though the financial crisis had developed under Bush.

The pivot for the entire documentary seems to be Obama’s opposition to Bush’s plans for war in Iraq with Saddam Hussein in 2002, when Hillary Clinton supported Bush’s plans to topple Saddam Hussein. When Bush’s war in Iraq seemed undermined by no finding of WMD’s, by 2008, Obama had some advantage in the Democratic primaries against Clinton, significant for his becoming president and the first African American.

Obama changed policy from large Armies to an “Obama’s War” of drones and kill lists of terrorists. The included his taking down of Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2011. But he kept a campaign promise to withdraw most troops from Iraq, a war that had made it to “Days of our Lives” under Bush.

However, Iraq’s government splintered into Shiite-Sunni sectarianism, with the Sunni’s binding with ISIS arising out of the quagmire in Syria. The power “low pressure system” would wind up with northern Syria and Iraq being overrun, and with a new existential threat to free speech in the way the Internet could be back-leveraged to get “lost souls” in the west to target ordinary civilians.

Zakaria also covers the passage of Obamacare, which Obama got Congress to write, and Obama’s handling of climate change, after a narrative of the disappearance of an island village in Alaska.

It also covered the controversial deal with Iran.

Zakaria did not cover the debt ceiling crises.

Zakaria did cover the way Donald Trump leveraged the “populism” of middle class people left out of globalization and modernization, and the way such people tend to turn to authoritarianism.

Jones interviewed some voters in Michigan. The y were quite blunt, they just wanted to keep their jobs, and they didn’t really care about Trump’s behavior with women or his eratic behavior.

Rick Santorum appeared and was rather equivocal in supporting Trumps’ trade policy, as well as his morals.

Later filmmaker Michale Moore from Michigan appeared and said, “I told you so.” He said he feared that Clinton was losing “the breakfast states” even before he did his own little film from Worthington, Ohio (Oct. 22, Movies).

Friday, December 02, 2016

Tonight, ABC 20-20 aired “One-on-One”, “Inside the California Mom’s mysterious disappearance and search for her alleged abductors”, basic link. ABC's Matt Guttman interviews the husband in this bizarre kidnapping case where the wife was returned battered.

On Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2016, Keith Papini came home from work at a Best Buy to his rural home near Redding CA and found an empty house. His wife, Sherri Papini, left her cellphone near their rural mailbox a mile away. Keith took a picture of it and called 911.

Sherri was found by another motorist before dawn Thanksgiving morning 140 miles to the south on I-5.

During the investigation, Keith took a polygraph test, and a private investigator and international kidnapping consultant Cameron Gable offered a ransom. There was also a GoFundMe effort, and many friends helped with the searches.

The two suspects were female, apparently Latino, and Sherri was branded during the torture. Law enforcement won’t say if this was targeted or random, but another consultant said this sounded like cult activity.

It is common for sex offenders to live in an area like this.

I doubt I could survive anything like this, and I would not want my life to be bargained for if ever singled out. It is wise, when in places like banks, to be mixed in with the crowd so as not to be singled out.

Wikipedia attributionlink for Mt. Shasta picture by Daniel Schwen, CCSA 2.5 I visited the area in 1975 and 1978 (Susanville).

Thursday, December 01, 2016

Donald Trump’s speech in Cincinnati tonight did say one
thing that resonated a bit with me. Most people care about real life, and their
local lives: family, community, sports
team, and country, and not about the world as an abstraction and other planets.

But that can mean subservience to others in your own tribe
that you don’t choose to be around.

He also insisted that the US has the no way to verify the
safety of letting in any people from certain countries. Europe didn’t seem to have a choice.

So he makes “taking care of your own first” a moral
necessity. Your country, your immediate
neighbors will come before “the others”. If you're weak, you fit into other people's social hierarchies, whether you would want to or not.

He did promise big infrastructure projects and that he would
not countenance bigotry, as an abstraction.

Here is Stephen Collinson’s account of the “raucous”
thank-you rally on CNN.

Friday, November 25, 2016

ABC’s “Shark Tank” tonight presented a young woman, 16 or 17
(Trisha Prabhu), who had developed an app “ReThink” (before the damage is
done). The parent or school installs it
on smart phones and laptops or on social media accounts. The idea is to intercept cyberbullying.

Barbara Corcoran was very tough on all the presenters
tonight (maybe she would be a very good president, and would have a good
nominee for the GOP – and she predicted Trump’s victory) . Corcoran is quick to judge people’s character
(and not just Trump’s). She thought
ReThink was wonderful as a non-profit but could not make money for investors.

Trisha said she has been coding apps since she was 10. OOP
is much easier to learn early in life.

Trisha said that 90% of the time, teens won't send a hurtful message if intercepted.

Melania Trump should find this project interesting, given her pre-election speech.

But three of the other panelists were “in”. Mark Cuban wanted her to relent on one item
and go with a major carrier for distribution. He thought ATT or Verizon would
want to play ball. One of the other investors was concerned that filters have been around a long time (he seemed to be referring to the 2007 COPA trial, for which I was a litigant).

Elizabeth Vargas (who appears in the ABC series) interviews actor Kiefer Sutheland, and then real DG’s Glickman (for the 1997 state of the union with Bill Clinton) and Horton (2002, for Bush).
The documentary showed footage of an unknown location for continuity of government today (I think it may be somewhere in the mountain areas NW of Gettysburg PA), then Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado (for NORAD), then Mt. Weather (“High Point” ) in the northern Blue Ridge between routes 7 and 50 in Virginia (you can drive right past it), and the bunker under the Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur Springs, W Va, which remained a secret -- Project Greek Island” -- until “spilled” in 1992. I visited the facility on a Sunday afternoon tour in August 1997, shortly before my move to Minneapolis. I believe there is one copy of my first DADT book there. Some of the footage in the ABC broadcast tonight looked familiar (like the temporary Congress halls and the radiation decontamination baths, and the barracks).

The documentary then covered the gap in power in the confusion after the near assassination of President Reagan on March 30, 1981 (the NatGeo movie, “Killing Reagan”, movies, Oct. 16, 2016). The public was never told. Alexander Haig took charge away from Larry Speaks.

The 20-20 program then covered the problem of the continuity of government in Poland after the 2010 plane crash in SmolenskRussia killing much of its government. I visited Warsaw and Cracow in May 1999. . ABC’s link for this portion is here.

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

I tried the Pilot episode of “Finding Prince Charming”
tonight, on LoGo, link here. It’s a 62-minute episode that expands to 90
minutes with ads.

It’s produced by Lance Bass (‘Nsync and later the brainy
commentator on Meredith Vieira). It’s
surely inspired by the heterosexual “Bachelor” and “Bachelorette”, but there’s
a touch of “The Apprentice” in the climax where the “prince charming” calls the
men up one by one and give a black tie to each one who made the first cut. But when is becoming a fashion designer’s
lover the equivalent of getting a top job?
Yet, there is something Trump-like in the show. Lance Bass (sort of a gaycon in his views,
enough for the GOP moderates), now 37,
seems quite fit to be president. And
some in the GOP – Lindsey Graham – would have been glad to have him there
instead of Trump.

Is “Prince Charming” the same as “Mr. Right”? Robert, 33, is not perfect for me – graying beard
and an unsightly permanent left side tattoo. He has a nice home that seems to be in the
Hollywood Hills, I guess, with big pool.
Of all the contestants, Chad,
from Atlanta (not the “Chad” of DOOL) was my favorite. He makes the cut. There
are a few contestants from Texas, and Dallas is presented as a swinging place
now.

There were two or three African-American contestants, and
you can’t discriminate even in picking a marriage partner.

One of the contestants "offended" the host by saying he wasn't attracted to men taller than him (I heard someone say that in NYC once). I feel the opposite. But that contestant stayed. Another contestant who was dismissed got criticism for not allowing himself to be "vulnerable".

Earlier this evening. Anderson Cooper interviewed Glenn Beck
about Bannon, Breitbart and the “alt-right”.
Beck said that no American should worry that his or her personal life or
love life depends on a presidential election, particularly if the president
hosts reality TV. That won’t be true for
some people. Including children brought here by undocumented workers.

Thursday, November 03, 2016

So the Cubbies finally do it after 108 years. And on Fox. Does this presage Trump's coming from behind to win the general election?

Here's the rally in the top of the 10th after 17-,minute rain delay.

Your browser does not support iframes.

Here's another good MLB link on the game. (To get the embed to resolve, you need to view as http. not https).

How often it is, that the visiting team wins a 7th game. Six times have come back from a 3-1 series deficit with the last two games on the road. But this year the Cubs could put the injured Schwarber in the lineup on the road in the AL Park, where the DH rule applied. That made the visiting team have more advantage this year. Here's alink on how many more runs the DH rule adds to AL games.

The Cubs totally dominated the National League in 2016. The Nationals went into Chicago in early May when the Cubs were 20-6 and became 24-6 with a four game sweep.

The Cubs played .640 ball with 103 wins. The 1954 Cleveland Indians played .714 ball, with 111 wins, only to be swept in four games by the Giants.

As a boy, I had attended some games in Cleveland's old "Mistake by the Lake", with that wire fence in the outfield. The Indians beat the Senators 11-0 one year, behind Herb Score, and then the Senators won another time, 4-0, behind Camilo Pascual.

In the new Progressive Field, you could see a blue and red Terminal Tower in the background.

Thursday, October 27, 2016

ABC 20-20’s “I’d Like to Confess to a Murder” (best summary link) last Friday reported the bizarre case of Christopher Waide, who finally called 911 and confessed when Tarot cards told him to do so. (A trick once pulled "The Prophet" as my card back in the 1970s.)

Lee Porter had disappeared and missing for two years. Her killer then claimed self-defense in a home tussle with a 98-pound woman. After the confession, prosecutors took a plea deal for 2nd Degree murder to help find her.

The other bizarre element of the story was that Christopher Waide had been majoring in criminal justice in a Denver college and may have learned how to get away with murder from his professors.

Wikipedia attribution linkfor museum in Sterling CO, CCSA 3.0, by Jeffrey Beall. I stopped for lunch at a family diner in Sterling on a Saturday in August 1994, read a local story on DADT, had my epiphany and decided to write my first book. I then drove on to Scottsbluff. Sterling is also a center of “cattle mutilation” lore in the 1970s (the 1982 film “Endangered Species”).

Thursday, October 20, 2016

On Sunday Oct. 16, Lisa Lang, on her “This Is Life” series, presented “The Black and White of Heroin: The Poisoning of America”, link

The most harrowing part of the episode show a young white woman, living alone in a slum apartment in Chicago, and apparently kicked out by her parents, waiting with Lisa there for her fix to be delivered to the dealer. She has but $50 to her name. She had been an honor student in high school but had fallen off the cliff somehow. She injects her own fix during the show.

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

The Third Presidential Debate tonight, in Las Vegas, seemed a little calmer than the first two.

But the most important moment seemed to come when Trump said he would wait and see if he would accept the results of the election if he loses. Of course, it the election were close and uncertain like 2000, maybe that could make sense.

The Washington Post quotes Trump as saying "I will keep you in suspense" and calls his statement "a horrifying repudiation of democracy" in an editorial Thursday.

Donald Trump called Hillary a "puppet", and accused her (and her charity) of accepting money from Saudi Arabia and from people who "throw gays off of buildings".

Trump also said that Obama and Hillary bear the blame for underestimating Assad in Syria.

Saturday, October 15, 2016

On Friday, Oct. 14, 2016, ABC 20-20 aired “What Happened to Jackie”, about the supposed rape case at the University of Virginia, leading to a libel lawsuit by Dean Nicole Eramo against Rolling Stone and reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely, The viewing link is here. (Somehow I think. “What Happened to Baby Jane”?”

The broadcast made the point that campus rape is a huge problem, and Jackie’s apparently false report, which seems to have been a “catfishing” scheme motivated by being turned down by a particular boy for romance (Ryan?) seriously impairs the willingness of others to take campus rape seriously.

The broadcast did describe the fact checking process at Rolling Stone, and the efforts of Washington Post reporter T. Rees Shapiro to recheck the entire story, here. A big issue seems to be how Erdely and Rolling Stone really perceived her personal credibility. She came to a point herself where she had to tell the magazine that her source had not been credible after all and that the story would have to be removed and retracted.

The broadcast also spent a lot of time interviewing the main plaintiff, Nicole Eramo. She got a lot of hate mail from people who didn't seem to be interested in the truth, or realize that a major publication could get things wrong.

Is this narrative a lesson for bloggers?

The actual trial begins soon (Monday). Reasonargues that since Eramo is a public figure, she herself has to pass a high bar to win a defamation suit,

Monday, October 10, 2016

Last night’s Debate #2, moderated by Anderson Cooper, from Washington University in St. Louis MO, became sickening, almost nauseating, very quickly. Trump took the bait. Anderson didn’t have to tear him to pieces, which is what I had expected.

Trump answered questions about his “Days of our Lives” hit on “Nicole” by saying he’s not as bad as Bill Clinton (the impeachment over Monica Lewinsky) or even Hillary, and then by comparing himself to ISIS, saying what he fantasized wasn’t as bad as what ISIS does. (I think it's rather funny that Trump likes Nicole as a character.)

Then he threatened to appoint a special prosecutor to put Hillary Clinton behind bars. That’s what dictators do to political rivals.

Sunday, October 09, 2016

Lin Manuel-Miranda hosted Saturday Night Live last night (episode), but there was one specific comedy segment that caught my attention, “The Sub”. A male substitute teacher gets himself kicked out of class while supposedly assigned to an AP English class.

The teacher tries to pimp the film “Straight Outta Compton” (Moves, 2015/8/20) and then claims his students are illiterate, before the real teacher shows up.

Saturday, October 08, 2016

Donald Trump indeed made a cameo on “Days of our Lives” in 2005, interacting with Nicole, who in the past was considered one of the soap’s most divisive and polarizing female characters (except for Sami).

The clip where he made offensive remarks about his attraction to a particular actress when visiting the “Days” set appear to apply to actress Arianne Zucker, or maybe to Nicole as a character herself.
David A. Fahrenhold, Washington Post reporter, reported on Trump’s lewd conversation with Billy Bush when in a limo on the way to the set of “Days” in 2005, when he was 59, link here.

It’s striking to me that Donald Trump feels pride in the automaticity of his arousal around certain women. That’s all rather Rosenfels-like. I can turn this upside down and apply it to myself.

Did the media release this just to embarrass Trump at the worst possible moment? Was this really intended to be a private fantasy, maybe something masturbatory that normally doesn’t become public at all?

It’s odd that the revelation comes after Days seems so on its way down. Some months ago, the soap was on a high note with the gay marriage of Will and Sonny. Then Will got married, and now people are getting killed off (since Hope killed Stefano) in a ganster-related quasi-terrorist siege of Salem.

Update: Oct. 10

NBC reports that the network has suspended Billy Bush, for his apparent conduct in conjunction with Donald Trump's remarks on the Access Hollywood segment,story. However, Access Hollywood may have more lenient standards for conduct and release of material than would a news broadcast.

Pence tried to play down Trump’s vacuous praise of Vladimir Putin, as being misinterpreted, saying Putin gets away with things because he runs a country that still supports authoritarian government and leadership.

The debate was held at Longwood University in Farmville, VA, where the public schools closed for a time in 1964 rather than integrate. The moderator made a strict warning that he would expel anyone for even brandishing a cell phone.

Update: Oct. 7

Vox, in a piece by Akhil Reed Amar, suggests that the GOP could make Pence and Trump trade places and give the GOP a credible presidential candidate, and its constitutional.

Sunday, October 02, 2016

A recent ABC 20-20 broadcast “In-Laws and Outlaws”, concerning the murder in broad daylight of Florida State professor Dan Markel, has apparently led to the arrest of a female accomplice for the “hit men” already facing the death penalty. The latest link, story by James Hill, ishere and links back to the original show which can be watched online through cable subscription.

The murder seems to have been born from a complicated domestic situation, even though it terrified neighbors. The hit men drove a rented vehicle to Tallahassee all the way from Miami (470 miles) and back immediately for the front driveway hit.

The case shows that broadcast journalism can help solve bizarre assassination-like cases that seem to defy explanation.

Thursday, September 29, 2016

True, Hope killed Stefano (after he called her a “coward” – he resigns his life by falling on a chessboard and knocking over a king), but good guys (like Will Horton) went, too. And now a criminal syndicate have surrounded Salem as if it were a terror group. It attacks the power plant, shutting down the grid (like an attack in California in 2013), kidnaps young adults, hacks the police station’s public broadcast and plants a hit man to take out the police chief. In the mean time, looting ravages Salem.

Maybe this is nearing the end. There is nothing honorable about having your life bargained for, or playing victim. I have to say, whatever the silliness of his antics, Donald Trump understands this.

The new domestic terror attack seems to say that people who “don’t play ball” but just watch will just disappear and be forgotten. It’s a disturbing, offensive message.

Sonny has come back, and again he can’t keep his chest hair on. The interesting thing is that the show has become quite p.c. on LGBT issues, as if now they are on the background, while eliminating so many of its characters. The saga seems near an end.

The young Hillary looks like a hippie or geek, almost, working on Watergate, learning how to defend secrets (which makes the email scandal seem more perplexing.) The documentary relates how Hillary failed the DC Bar, but passed the Arkansas bar, so she went back home to her boyfriend Bill, who looks surprisingly youthful compared to what we’ve gotten used to.

But eventually it covers the 1992 election, and her Health Care Bus in 1993, with the energetic demonstrations in the hinterlands by those who believe in taking care of only their own.

The documentary intersperses this narrative with Donald Trump’s (in comparison to CNN, which presented them separately), and focuses especially on Trump’s upbringing in luxury in Queens by real estate mogul Fred. Trump wound up in military school because he was a discipline problem at home, and seemed to thrive. For most of his career, winning was his own virtue.

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

OK, Hillary Clinton won the 95-minute debate last night at Hofstra University, New York. NBC anchor Lester Holt, who, remember had replaced Brian Williams on Nightly News after “exaggeration-gate”, did a steady job as the lecture hall professor asking the oral exam questions. NBC’s summary is here. I actually watched in in a bar on CNN (“You love your own reality”, like a witch – story and videos ).

Trump kept on interrupting Clinton, and spoke for about five minutes later. Jack Andraka (Stanford University “undergraduate” cancer researcher) wrote “reminds me of a painful holiday dinner with distant relatives -- yelling over me doesn’t make you right.”

The climatic moment came at the end when Trump said “I have a winning temperament”, hesitating before saying the word the way he chokes on the “Q” of “LGBTQ”. It's as if temperament is as permanent as leg hair.

Clinton did have full stamina during the debate.

Trump also kept on saying the word “bad”. It’s as if he’s seen the famous viral tweet of popular NYC musician Timo Andres about one’s whole life output being a “process piece that gets progressively less bad”. Yes, I think Trump saw that tweet and it sticks in his mind. But Hillary Clinton, besides talking about the “basket of deplorables” in the past (not last night), I think one time inadvertently quoted a key line of the movie “Judas Kiss”: “Most people walk in the direction they’re headed.”

As for that movie, Shane Lyons really is no “gay Donald Trump.” True, he gets what he wants (Danny). Shane is not exactly the conquistador that Trump imagines himself to be. It’s Trump who is the real bad boy.

Trump did make some valid points about currency manipulation and the loss of jobs to China and Mexico. (Is he going where Porter Stansberry wants to take us with talk about losing status as reserve currency). Hillary didn’t completely answer him. And there is a significant electorate in swing states that just wants that old way of life with manufacturing jobs back. But the new jobs should be in making cars, tech components, and especially in new power grid components (which I wish the candidates would talk about explicitly). We need to make more of our transformers at home for national security reasons.

Clinton mentioned paid family leave, without saying how to pay for it except with higher taxes on the rich.

She also discounted claims that "stop and frisk" is necessary to reduce crime in large cities. In New York City, it was stopped by Di Blasio, but crime did not go back up when it was stopped. And the policy never recovered many guns (Tom Foreman, CNN). Clinton wants to prohibit people on no-fly lists from buying guns.

Trump said he would release his tax returns, against legal advice, when Hillary releases her deleted emails, which have nothing to do with taxes.

The debate on national security did not get as specific as it might have. Clinton noted that NATO members have one another’s backs and had ours after 9/11. (Germany helped fly patrols over the US.) There was not the detail on cybersecurity or Internet recruiting of terrorists that there might have been.

Trump has also drawn flak today for his treatment of a former Miss Universe who then gained a lot of weight. His behavior has existential implications for the stability of all adult intimate relationships, and says a lot about resilience.

Monday, September 26, 2016

I think it was Sunny Hostin who said, “Listen to my experience as a black woman in America, and don’t just say, stop talking about It:”.

But Whoopi Goldberg said, that isn’t enough. “Admit that there is a problem.”

Clay Aiken (white and gay) tried to mediate. But Joy Behar said, “If you’re white, you have an advantage.” It’s like home-field advantage in baseball. Or is it like making the first move in a chess game.

They skirted across the surface then. Some realtors just don’t show some houses or apartments to black applicants. Job applicants with “black names” don’t get as many callbacks. Blacks are hired for less money (and sometimes so are single or childless people).

And yet Obama is president.

I do remember a black coworker in the 1990s saying he was training his son how to deal with discrimination and with the police.

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Wednesday night, ABC launched the pilot of a controversial political and disaster thriller, “Designated Survivor”, created by David Guggenheim, directed by Paul McGuigan. ABC’s link is here.

Kiefer Sutherland plays the HUD secretary Tom Kirkman in the Cabinet, who has just been “fired” at the beginning of a president’s second term and offered an ambassadorship. Right before the State of the Union speech, Kirkman is hustled into a bunker and told he is the “designated survivor” in case of attack.

As he watches the speech, the Capitol is bombed and all of Congress and the rest of the administration is killed. A mild-mannered Kirkman takes over (after taking the oath of office and almost immediately vomiting) and then decides he wants to challenge the hawkish generals and stay “in power”.

There is a mushroom cloud, but there's no mention so far of nuclear weapons or radiation fallout. A second bomb is found and it is said to be an elaborate device used in Afghanistan.

There’s not much attention yet to what the nation faces. Maybe something like martial law.

The documentary film showed a Syrian family settling in southern California, in an apartment, getting some assistance from volunteers and social services, and then focused on a girl going to kindergarten or first grade class. Since I have worked as a substitute teacher, I’m familiar with the way kids often sit on rugs in class in lower grades. The female teacher was very sympathetic and talked in “baby talk” explaining the country of the new pupil. (She did not need to say to Gary Johnson, “Aleppo is in Syria.”)

The documentary moves ahead three months to the Paris attacks on 2015/11/13. The townspeople start to become suspicious of refugees, while right-wing political candidates, especially Donald Trump talk about sending everyone back. Obviously, the Syrian family would get very frightened. Muir interviews people who pose existential questions as to how much risk individual Americans should take to help others overseas. There is definitely a sentiment, if you want to help people, take care of your own first.

Muir then travels to Jordan, where he reports on how the US State Department vets the refugees who may be let in.

The last section of the documentary shows the girl getting an award (“Spartan”) for proficiency in ESL form the school.

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Tonight, CNN presented the one hour documentary “Almost President: The Agony of Defeat”,link Is it really that agonizing if you even won the nomination?

The film covered Mitt Romney’s loss in 2012 (after he derided the “47%” as welfare moochers in a private but recorded conversation), as well as John McCain’s 2008 loss (with Sarah Palin). But the most remarkable loss may have been Michael DuKakas in 1988, in an election that was supposed to be about competence. Dukakis was seen as not human enough when he reacted to a hypothetical question about his wife, after he let out a former murdered.

The documentary briefly covered Gore’s loss to Bush n 2000, but Gore went on to make “An Inconvenient Truth” and win a Pulitzer Prize.

Bill Clinton would , however, not taste defeat, as he would defeat George H W. Bush just two years after the Persian Gulf War, when a recession ensued. Bush’s problems started in January 1992 when he vomited into the lap of the president of Japan at a state dinner, before the meat course. I remember hearing about that right as I got up and got ready for work. It was so embarrassing.

Monday, September 05, 2016

“CNN Presents” and CNN Films presented two documentary biographies of the two major presidential candidates Labor Day night.

“Unfinished Business: The Essential Hillary Clinton”, aired on CNN Labor Day evening 8-10 PM as a biography of candidate for president Hillary Clinton.

Her upbringing in a white suburb of Chicago was covered, including the wide street intersection where kids played “back yard baseball” the way we did in the 1950s in real back yards. Manhole covers served as bases and there was no outfield fence (we had one). The field must have been much smaller than old Comiskey Park.

Her meeting with young Bill is covered, as was her internship and employment in the days of Watergate and hunting down Richard Nixon. Bill is shown with a big beard in one scene, a bizarre contrast to his completely hairless body.

The documentary covers her running for president in the primaries of 2008. In 2016. It covers he surprise at the rise of Bernie Sanders.

Hillary Clinton is the first female nominee of a major party for president of the United States.
The coverage of the email server scandal is rather superficial.

The broadcast was followed at 10 PM with “All Business: The Essential Donald Trump” which would surely cover “The Apprentice” and Omarosa (and maybe Troy McClain?) CNN’s press release link for the two presentations is here.

The documentary starts with Fred Trump. Donald’s father, who changed the skyscape of Brooklyn and Queens. Fred was a workaholic who did not take kids to Yankees’ games. Donald learned to play soccer. He also got in trouble in school and spent time in detention, and wound up in military school.

“Life is a competition, to the death. There is only winning.”

Fred’s racial discrimination in renting apartments is covered.

Trump says he doesn’t drink or smoke.

The report covered the way Trump handled the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, which involved incredible risk taking. Trump would be threatened with bankruptcy in 1990, but would be allowed to remain his own salesman.

Trump found he could make back tremendous profits by merely licensing his brand name to other properties and products.

But his run for president may have effectively started in 2004 with his breakthrough on reality TV with "The Apprentice." At first, he wasn't going to be the only CEO. On about the fourth episode in 2004, about negotiation, candidate Troy McClain allowed his legs to be waxed at a beauty salon, a fact mentioned by Trump in his book "How to Get Rich".

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Sunday night, CNN aired an episode of “Declassified” about a Chinese spy Chi Mak who gathered US Navy communications technology secrets while working for the government as an engineer contractor in California.

The best link ishere and there is a video (not embeddable) of how agents searched his home without leaving a trace, although it’s not clear how they were so easily able to break in (picking locks?) The FBI bugged their home and claims that Mak and his wife did not have an intimate marital relationship but were more like business partners.

The CNN article warns that China regularly targets employees with security clearances both at home and work with phishing email attacks, possibly tracking and trying to induce clicks on drive by websites or ads. These kinds of malware would not create ransomware demands but could transmit work secrets and PII and personal habits back to enemies

Sunday, August 28, 2016

Sunday, August 28, 2016. On Global Public Square, Fareed Zakaria presented a special report “Global Lessons on Guns”.

Zakaria looked at three other countries. The first was Japan, and it is the strictest. It is normally nearly impossible for most civilians to get firearms, except for licensed and credentialed hunters. Even the macho Yaku cult with full body tattoos does not use guns. There are very few gun deaths in Japan.

Next he looked at Switzerland. With its mandatory military service for men, is it a gun owner’s paradise? Not exactly. Upon finishing military service, men (who keep guns but not ammo at home) turn in weapons and need licenses to continue keeping them.

Next Zakaria looked at Australia, which passed a draconian gun control law in 1996 after a particularly horrible mass shooting. It also instituted a mandatory gun buyback of assault weapons

Finally Zakaria interviewed a retired Army general, who talked about the strain of 13 years of war, with Stop-Loss repeat deployments, on an all volunteer force, as contributing to gun suicide of veterans.

Zakaria took the position that America’s problem of gun violence is systemic, and can’t be solved just by looking at the psycho-pathology of mass shooters (as with Gus Van Sant’s 2003 film “Elephant”).
But others (like Ben Swann above) present data questioning whether these measures in Australia and the UK were effective (the UK had an incident in 1997 and quickly clamped down, Australian style).

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

CNN held a 90-minute town hall for the Green Party presidential and vice-presidential candidates Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka, writeup here.

Jill Stein called for forgiveness of student loan debts, most of which she said are owned by the federal government. This would increase spending power of young adults who can’t find adequate jobs to match what they spent of college educations. No wonder Peter Thiel regards college as a ripoff or scam and funds entrepreneurs to drop out!

Stein actually admitted that Donald Trump has raised valid criticisms of past US policy, especially in Iraq. But she said that ISIS cannot be viewed as an existential threat to the US. She seemed to overlook the novelty of asymmetric threats (like dirty bombs, EMP, etc), or even unusual targeting of ordinary Americans.

She indicated she had changed her position on vaccinations, not opposing them since mercury has been removed.

Baraka (an ironic last name) said that Obama had behaved like an Uncle Tom or token black president. Under his administration police profiling has gotten worse.

Monday, August 15, 2016

NBC’s Olympics may be going better than it might have, with all the fears about security and about Zika.

We hear Michael Phelps, 31, crowned “the greatest swimmer of all time”. We see pictures that would please National Review’s David Skinner (“Notes on the Hairless Man” from June 1999), with even underarms shaved. We see lots of wisecracks about pretty "thmooth" bodies on Twitter, even from established “straight” male stars.

That makes the story about a robbery of four swimmers, including Ryan Lochte, when in a taxi stopped by gunmen posed as police, extra disturbing. Lochte felt a line had been crossed (as I would ) and at first refused to comply. Like, it’s more honorable to die than to negotiate with terrorists, or criminals.

More recently, several sources have reported that Brazilian police question Lochte's claims and tried to detain him. The detailsare bizarre and reported most completely in UK's Daily Mail. It's getting more bizarre with stories about swimmers vandalizing a gas station. Again, David Skinner will laugh at all those smooth bodies.

Lochte's "apology" seems unconvincing to me, at least; were the "robbers" really security guards from the gas station? Is that how things work in Brazil. "Requiem for the Hairless Man" sounds like a title for a movie spoof about this incident, maybe. Or maybe. "Fabulist II" (or "Shattered Glass II", if Lionsgate wants to do it). AOL has a detailed later account from one of the teammates with more detail, and it says Lochte was "thrown under the bus". This latest account may give the right perspective.

But Sally Jenkins writes on p. D12 of the Washington Post Monday, "It's a sorry excuse for an apology from a guy who still doesn't get it", withLTE's. Lochte and others may not have understood that in poorer countries like Brazil, "negotiations" with security at gunpoint are a way things are settled. But he's losing endorsements and sponsors quickly. "He'thmooth".

The best chance for geographical scenery is in the cycling. (routes ) The longest vertical rise is about 2500 feet, but the Brazilian “Appalachians” go to about 9000 feet – Neblina Peak on the Venezuelan border reached 9827,

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Wednesday night, Aug. 9, 2016, PBS American Experience re-aired “LBJ”, a four-hour, two-part film by David Grubin, narrated by David McCollough. Here’s the official link.

I remember election day in 1964, cool and rainy, lots of fallen leaves around. My father said, “Npbody can beat LBJ.” He voted for Goldwater (despite the commercial with the little girl in front of the hydrogen bomb). I was 21 then. I think I voted for LBJ and went along with the crowd.
On February 8, 1968, I would take the oath and enter the Army, with basic at Fort Jackson, SC., shortly after the Tet offensive, which up-ended Lyndon Johnson’s previous “optimism” about prevailing in Vietnam.

The first episode covers his work in the civil rights movement as senator, and continues with the Kennedy assassination and his “accidental” presidency and his desire to prove himself in 1964. It seems that he manipulated the Gulf of Tonkin (or USS Maddox) to decrease the perception he could be soft of communism with Goldwater as opponent.

As covered in McNamara’s book “In Retrospect”, LBJ’s involvement in Vietnam seems insidious, but actually it escalated very quickly in 1965, after the election.

Johnson feared that the War would divert Congress away from the War on Poverty and Great Society initiatives. He signed Medicare into law in July 1965, just two days after a critical wigwam on Vietnam (I was working my first summer at the Navy David Taylor Model Basin at the time). John felt that America was affluent enough to be able to share wealth with the poor easily. Johnson also thought that US technology would prevail easily in Vietnam, as he did not understand guerrilla warfare led by a dictator (Ho Chi Minh) who could mobilize poor people who had little to lose into self-sacrifice.

By 1966, Johnson had to deal with a “different kind of folk” among inner city blacks in northern cities, who seemed much more combative and who, according to the documentary, wanted “black power”. The film covers the 1965 Selma march rather summarily.

Demonstrations against the War (and the draft) started to accelerate in 1966 and 1967. The documentary did not cover the deferment controversy as well as it might have.

Johnson's last days at his ranch the Texas Hill Country were sad, as he tried to run the ranch like it was a country. He depended on nitroglycerin tablets, spoke for the last time in 1972 and died of cardiac arrest four days before the Vietnam peace treaty was announced in January 1973.

Monday, August 08, 2016

Chris Cuomo hosted the CNN special “Got Shorty: Inside the Search for El Chapo” Sunday night, Aug. 8, linkhere. The title of the episode is an obvious take-off on the 90s film “Get Shorty”. Why did CNN's video on this suddenly disappear today?

The most impressive part of the documentary probably was the smelly underground tunnel, covered by a bathtub in a home at one point.

Also covered was the extra-legal shadow government run by the cartel.

The story of Kate del Castillo is also covered

Related is the film “Sicario” (January 13, 2016 on Movies), and the Rolling Stone article by Sean Penn (Books Jan 27, 2016.

Saturday, August 06, 2016

In preparation for the Olympics, ABC Nightline did a special on body building by young men, especially one teen (David Laid) who started at age 14, and is interviewed at 18. But another body builder developed organ failure problems (but that would happen with steroids). Here’s the ABC Nightlinelink.

I’m reminded of a kid (Hugo Cornelier -- is that French Canadian?) who took a selfie everday from age 12 to 20. There is a noticeable difference.

Thursday, August 04, 2016

Anderson Cooper hosted the Libertarian Party candidates Town Hall last night, the second such event, on CNN (the first was on June 22). Gary Johnson and William Weld were questioned as to whether their positions represented pure libertarianism. Weld disagrees with “religious liberty bills” actually intended to approve of deliberate discrimination.

One particularly handsome young man said he had been fired from a job and expelled as a student from a “Christian” school. One wonders why he even had attended.

Johnson said that a bakery should be required by law to sell a cake to any customer, under public accommodations. But it was legitimate to refuse to do the labor to decorate the cake if the owner of the shop had a religious objection to same-sex marriage.

On weapons, Johnson pointed out that full assault weapons cannot be sold legally in the US. He felt that an old-style Clinton era assault weapons ban would simply make a lot of today’s gun owners “criminals”.

Johnson did talk about different kinds of marijuana, and accepted the idea that some forms need to be more regulated and kept away from minors.

Weld reiterated the idea that libertarianism stresses government get out of people’s wallets and out of people’s bedrooms.

Wednesday, August 03, 2016

The opening of the 50-minute documentary talked about Nazi values, for the “perfect body”, for what is “desirable”, as an idea that had originated in Sparta in ancient Greece. I must ponder this with regards to my own gay values as to what I "want" in a partner through "upward affiliation".

Hitler gradually made allowances to allow token Jewish competitors in order to convince the rest of the world that he wasn’t “racist” or warlike, and to put on a great show when everyone showed up in Berlin in August 1936. Particularly critical was the politics of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and support of Avery Brumbage.

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